


Find Us Side by Side

by Kittendiamore



Series: Side by Side by Side [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Character, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3257885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittendiamore/pseuds/Kittendiamore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks about running a hand down Steve’s chest; the surprising strength of Peggy’s thighs when he kisses between them, the way she reaches down and takes a hold of Steve. He thinks things might not turn out so bad between them all. She and Steve could still get married, have kids. He can be content, he thinks, as Uncle Bucky. As the family friend that hopefully gets to kiss, to touch, behind closed doors. At least for a little while. He was never one for a conventional love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Us Side by Side

**Author's Note:**

> Every love triangle should be solved with polyamory, to be honest. Title is from MS MR's Dark Doo Wop. There was originally a whole heap of italics but my copy-pasting took it out so just assume a whole lot of sarcasm and you should be fine.
> 
> Possible warnings for: Torture-y stuff (I think it's pretty mild but if you're worried just hit me up with a message and I'll give you the details); and extreme love for Peggy Carter.

It all starts in a bar. Every now and then you have to celebrate the little victories. They choose the place because its right next to where they’re staying (the kind of dusty old place that’s only a treat in war-times ‘cause it’s a step better than freezing your ass off camping on the hard dirt), and the Commandos don’t plan on being able to stumble far by the end of the night.

He talks Steve into a drink. Then another one. Then another one. Then-

“Nothing?” Bucky drawls, and yes he is totally capable of walking straight, excuse you. “Not even a little dizzy?”

Steve shrugs in that innocent, school-boy way that’s really a bit rich coming from the guy who just did ten shots in an hour. “I guess it just doesn’t hit me with the serum.”

“Nope,” Bucky replies. “This won’t do. We’ll have to test things further.” He moves to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, but misses and ends up doing a neck grab that’s a little gentler than intended. The move could be interpreted as kind of intimate but Steve doesn’t react badly to having his neck caressed by his broken, long-time friend. Steve smiles, softly. Interesting.

Bucky somehow manages to sweet talk the bartender into letting him have a whole bottle of whisky. (It’s probably watered down, but considering Bucky’s stumbling, that’s a blessing in disguise.) They leave the bar together, with the whisky, and head for their accommodations.

“To think,” Bucky says, feeling the kind of recklessness that alcohol tends to give “that it took a war for us to have this.”

He slips a hand around Steve’s waist, bottle in the other, and stumbles his steps a little exaggeratedly. Steve laughs and immediately wraps an arm around his shoulder. (Interesting.)

“Have what? Buck, I’ve seen you struggling to walk plenty of days.”

“Ha ha, punk,” he replies, “I meant this. Everything. We can- we can go walking through the streets and drink as much as we want and I don’t have to worry anymore-”

They start walking down the hallway towards their room, and when did that happen? “I don’t have to worry that your lungs are just gonna break one day,” he continues, “And I know it’s war, and we could get shot at any time, but I still like our chances a helluva lot more now that you got all your organs in working order.”

“Are you okay, Buck?” Steve asks, and they stop walking, they face each other and they’re so close that Bucky’s pretty sure the heat from Steve’s body is enough to burn all the alcohol away from him too. Steve looks concerned. Bucky opens his mouth and words tumble out like dominoes, too late to stop.

“When I went to the army, I told myself it’d be good for you if I left but. But I think I was just being selfish ‘cause at least if I ran off to the frontline and got my head blown off, I wouldn’t have to see you the next time you had a bad cough but couldn’t shake off. ‘Cause it’s so much worse to lose you than to lose myself.”

And oh God, there it is, Buck realises. All the things he’d wanted to say but had never worked up the courage, and the shock of Steve’s face tells him that the other man has read between the lines and heard the three words that Bucky’s never had the guts to say. This is the make or break moment right here, although it’s not as simple as that as it’s not like Steve would ever abandon him just for being in love with him and-

“Huh,” Steve says. Then he nods like he gets it, “Yeah.”

Okay, cool, thanks for thank eloquent response. They look at each other. Everything slows down and then it speeds up.

Steve launches forward and Bucky’s back is against the hallway wall and they’re kissing. Steve’s hands are big and warm on his waist and he puts 110 percent into the kiss just like he does with everything. Bucky always though this kind of thing - two guys kissing - would look kinda odd what with one of them having to act like the girl and all, but he was so wrong. They are both so obviously male and it’s almost violent the way they kiss and claw and grab at each other as if it’s all simultaneously too much and not enough (but even so, Bucky thinks, the worst thing in the world would be them stopping because this is perfect and everything and the only thing that matters or ever will matter).  

Bucky is seriously considering dragging them both down to the floor and just going at it properly when someone clears their throat.

They spring apart. Steve’s breathing heavier than after one of his daring sprints through enemy territory. Bucky almost smirks but he has to focus on the present situation which is where they are currently screwed. And not in the good way he’d been hoping for.

Fuck, they couldn’t have just waited until they got into a nice, private room before they pounced? Although in retrospect, kissing Steve apparently causes a guy to lose all abilities relating to common sense, so really this isn’t Bucky’s fault. Bucky looks at the interloper, wondering if this is the kinda excuse that would hold up.

 

Peggy Carter is watching them with a raised eyebrow and a guarded expression, and now Bucky knows that they’re really fucked. If it had just been one of the guys, well, there would’ve been a chance that they could’ve passed it off as a drunk thing - and it’s not like it would’ve been the first time a guy wanted some company in the army and had no girls around. But Peggy is a whole different story. Peggy Carter is the kind of girl that would shoot at Captain America for getting a bit cozy with one of the lady Privates. It’ss no secret about how Peggy feels about Steve (except maybe to Steve) and this was a bit worse than catching an innocent kiss between a guy and a girl.

Bucky tries not to catch the torn look on Steve’s face because then he’ll have to acknowledge that he just ruined his best friend’s chance at marrying his perfect girl and starting a perfect family. He knew Steve had a thing for Carter and he hadn’t cared (or he’d cared too much). Fuck. He’s really fucked up.

“Gentlemen,” Peggy says, her voice sounds stern to Bucky but the way Steve flinches suggests there’s some hurt in there too. “Perhaps-” and here it comes, the part where he gets dishonourably discharged or court martialled, or just royally screwed over, because he’s not special like Captain America, he’s just a fucking- “Perhaps, you should find somewhere more private to… conduct your business,” She finishes.

They all stare silently at each other and something hot rushes over Bucky. He feels dreadful, like he’s not quite in his body at the moment because he realises that Peggy Carter isn’t just some pretty dame with the good taste of being in love with Steve; Peggy Carter is an amazing woman. An amazing person.

“Peggy,” Steve says, guilt thick in each syllable.

“It’s alright, Captain,” she replies, her eyes flickering between the two men before her. “I had -hoped, but it isn’t, it’s not your fault you don’t-”

“It’s not that I don’t-” Steve begins, but cuts himself off when he catches eyes with Bucky.

And Bucky can suddenly sympathise with how hard it must be to be in love with two different people at the same time, the past and the future meeting in the middle and how is Steve supposed to react to that? Bucky knows he’s too good a man to want to let either of them down, and he’s not just going to throw Bucky behind because Peggy’s so clearly the right choice. Steve is an idiot. A good-hearted fucking idiot. And he’s throwing his future with Peggy away with every single excuse he can’t betray Bucky to actually say.

“I, Peggy, I’m not,” Steve is stumbling over his words so Bucky cuts in.

“Drink with us,” he says, picking up the bottle that’s miraculously unspilled considering he doesn’t remember putting it down..

Steve is silent. Peggy gives him an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

“Drink with us,” Bucky repeats. “We’re in  the middle of a war that could last forever for all we know. Any one of us could die at any moment, supersoldier or not, so where’s the satisfaction, the happiness, in us all dancing around subjects and pretending not to want what we want?”

“Sergeant,” Peggy begins, but Bucky cuts in.

“Drink with us,” he says, then, deliberately, “Peggy.”

He’s insanely surprised when it actually works.

-

The room Steve got assigned has a double bed and they all sit around on it, shoes off and collars unbuttoned, and pass around the bottle of whisky. Steve looks, expectedly, out of his depth, but the alcohol - or maybe just the newfound knowledge that Steve actually wants him - is enough to keep Bucky feeling a little more relaxed. “Any power, like in the comics,” Bucky says, taking another sip and passing the bottle to Peggy, her lipstick smearing the top of it as she drinks. Bucky thinks about girls saying that sharing a drink is inadvertent kissing and he finds that he doesn’t mind the idea of kissing Peggy. He may not love her, but he sure as hell respects and admires her. And it’s not like she isn’t easy on the eyes.

“Any power?” Peggy replies, passing the drink to Steve. “I think being able to travel in seconds, to any place in the world.”

“You could be a bank robber,” Bucky grins, and he lies down, the top of his head centimeters away from Peggy’s thigh, and his legs near Steve’s.

Peggy starts running a hand through his hair. The touch is deliberate. “Or I could help people. Save them from burning buildings and from the front of bullets.”

Bucky rolls his eyes playfully. “How’d I get stuck in a room with two do-gooders?”

Peggy laughs and she and Bucky both look to Steve at the same time and he. Well he looks pretty fixated on the way Peggy’s touching Bucky’s hair and it makes Bucky feel warm all over in a good way. The way that promises things to come. Peggy gives Bucky a look, a question in  her eyes and Bucky’s not sure how they started communicating with their eyes, but he nods and then he watches as Peggy leans towards Steve and kisses him, hand still on Bucky’s head.

Well fuck, Bucky thinks, they both look beautiful together. But they’re so pure and clean and gentle in a way that makes him want to crawl between them and teach them how to be dirty like him.

And so he does.

-

The morning after is considerably less awkward when you’re sporting a hangover bad enough for you to forget things like self-consciousness and regret. Not that Bucky regrets the debauchery of the night previous.

“Oh, sweet mother of Jesus,” Bucky moans, burying his head into a dainty shoulder.

“Mmph,” Peggy murmurs, throwing an arm over her eyes.

“Wow, I didn’t know what morning people you two are,” Steve replies from the other side of Peggy, sounding way too chipper considering he drank the better part of a bottle of whisky last night.

“Ugh,” Peggy and Bucky reply, swatting ineffectually at him.

Steve laughs, but quietly, and the notes of happiness in his voice are enough to ease Bucky’s hangover a little. He gets out of bed, but he’s back before Bucky can really worry he’s going to disappear or something. “Water?” Steve asks, holding a couple of glasses towards them. “We’ve got a meeting in less than an hour.”

And those are the magic words to get Peggy and Bucky moving. Because no hangover hurts as much as the wrath from being late to a meeting.

After that, Steve, Bucky and the Commandos are on a new mission with barely enough time for a nod in Peggy’s direction.

They don’t talk about it. But Bucky thinks that they might.

-

He thinks about running a hand down Steve’s chest, the surprising strength of Peggy’s thighs when he kisses between them, the way she reaches down and takes a hold of Steve. He thinks maybe things might not turn out so bad between them all. She and Steve could still get married, have kids. He can be content, he thinks, as Uncle Bucky. As the family friend that hopefully gets to kiss, to touch, behind closed doors. At least for a little while. He was never one for a conventional love.

-

He falls off a train.

-

Lying in the snow, bleeding out, he can’t feel anything and it’s only a matter of- a matter of time.

At least Steve will have Peggy to look after him, to love him, to put him back together again. She better kick him when he starts blaming himself.

-

 

-

 

-

 

-

His arm is made out of metal and it’s some next level Stark expo shit because he can move it almost like normal. They keep spouting words at him, nonsense and propaganda and it all sounds like the evil version of a Captain America short. He should be grateful, they tell him. They found him broken and rebuilt him. He was special. They knew it from the moment they’d first captured him, injected him with whatever it was that made falling out a train child’s-play (as long as you counted losing a fucking arm as child’s-play). They ask him questions, so many stupid questions.

“Go fuck yourself,” he tells the man with the glasses.

They break both his legs and throw him in a cell and tell him it’s all just a lesson. He needs to learn to appreciate what they’ve done for him. He needs to see how fast he heals.

-

Peggy Carter listens to Steve apologise as he rushes into his early, icy grave. He talks about love and dancing; he talks about her and Sergeant Barnes; he asks her to look for Barnes. Don’t let them give up searching for him. His family, they deserve to bury him. His last words get cut off.

Peggy dips her head in grief and a little part of her is bitterly jealous that they’ve both gone and left her behind like this.

-

Peggy Carter lets Howard take the lead on searching for Steve; she keeps her promise and starts looking for the lesser-known man that was prey to an icy death. She asks the people of a nearby town for advice in finding a body and some of them are sympathetic enough to offer to help her search for a little while. When she describes the man she’s looking for, they freeze.

“His name was James Barnes,” she says, “He was a dear friend. Have you seen anyone who matches his description?”

They are sympathetic to her, but they are also very afraid.

She frowns. “Did someone take his body?”

-

He has no concept of time because the fuckers are trying to break him. They keep his cell plunged in darkness most of the time, but every now and then the lights will start flashing, bright enough to burn through closed eyelids. Every now and then they take him out and throw him in a room of black-clad men. The men tend to enjoy beating the everloving shit out of him.

The next time this happens (seventh? eighth?), something’s different. It starts the same as usual, they pull him out of his cell kicking and screaming (he’s inordinately proud to get a good hit at one guy’s jaw with the metal hand; ain’t no-one but a mother that’d be able to love that newly rearranged face) and then he’s thrown into the room again. He’s on the ground, considering whether they’ll lose interest if he just stays down this time -unless that’s what they want him to do? Fuck, he never knows whether he’s acting in their interests, this place is a total mindfuck- when one of the jackbooted thugs steps towards him. He lays eyes on the boots and that’s when things change. The man has a knife strapped to his ankle.

James sees the chance. The man says something - it sounds French, but he barely register it - and he grabs the knife and slices the man’s achilles’ tendon. The man drops in a scream of pain and Barnes is up, running for the next man. The others appear to be unarmed, but skilled at combat and had he not been equipped with fire in his veins and a shiny new arm, it might be a challenge to take them all out.

He stands in the midst of the men as they bleed out and gasp for air through punctured lungs, and he wonders, what next? He’ll need to act fast, the guards will be back to drag him to his cell again, soon, and this is the closest he’s ever gotten to even considering an escape. He can remember the route to his cells and from there to the lab. He vaguely recalls seeing a glimpse of snowy landscape through a window somewhere along the way there. It’s his best chance.

Storming for the door, Barnes crushes the doorknob and pulls it open to reveal the man with the glasses. Clapping.

“Congratulations, Soldier,” the squirrel-faced fucker says, “You’ve helped eliminate five enemies to Hydra’s cause.”

Against all training, Barnes looks back into the room. The men - his attackers; his victims - are all still, dead. They look thin, too thin for Hydra soldiers and, and they aren’t wearing black anymore but he thought…?

“I didn’t-” realise, he wants to say. He had thought they were more of the same, he had seen, but he hadn’t, had he? He’d seen boots and an opportunity and his body had moved on instinct and he hasn’t killed Hydra goons, he’s killed men. Soldiers, prisoners, people. “I didn’t,” he repeats, but his voice breaks and he can’t speak because they’ve tricked him.

“You’ve done good work, Soldier,” the man says.

Sergeant, he wants to correct, but sergeants earn their ranks. They don’t kill indiscriminately. They don’t kill their own.

What have I done? he wonders, What are they making me become?

He hardens. “Go fuck yourself, you psycho, nazi-” he gets punched out. It almost hurts.

-

She sits outside the HYDRA base and watches the guards’ shift changes. She tries to hack into their communication channels to find out intel. James Buchanan Barnes, she thinks, could be alive still. Could be’s, unfortunately, aren’t enough to forge a rescue mission for one man - especially during a war. Still, she’s resourceful, intelligent and determined. She’s going to fulfill her promise to Steve. She has the time anyway, since they didn’t want her doing anything stressful in her ‘time of grief’. Women as so fragile, after all.

There’s a rustling in the bushes behind her. She waits.

-

He’s starving, he’s filthy and he’s resetting his own broken nose in the darkness of the cell when he hears the screaming. It’s the kind of screaming he has a recognition for - the screams of someone whose veins are on fire. Who can feel the angry burn of whatever chemical they use to unmake humans into something wrong, something that’s bones heal in hours. It’s the stuff from his first time getting captured, but the newest edition. They think they’ve perfected it, he heard them say when they injected it into him. Other than a few potential bugs they don’t seem inclined to care about. They need monsters, not perfection.

Eventually the voice stops screaming and he wonders if the person passed out, or is dead like the rest of them.

-

A body gets thrown into the cell beside him. It’s too dark to see anything but a silhouette. The person makes a quiet noise and he realises it’s a woman. Apparently HYDRA are trying to see how low they can go like it’s a limbo competition.

The woman makes another sound, he thinks she’s waking up. And maybe he’s not entirely human anymore, but he wants to reach out to her. He feels a terrible pity for the woman and wishes bitterly that it was only him that had to go through this place.

“Easy there, darling,” he murmurs, “Don’t try to move too fast, it takes a few for your body to adjust.” He wishes he could reassure her, tell her it’s going to be okay, but it’s all just empty lies. He wonders if he could convince the woman to kill him. He wonders if he should kill the woman.

“Barnes?” The woman asks. Her voice is...familiar.

“...Peggy?”

She makes a sound that’s something like a laugh. “And here I was thinking I’d have to go looking for you.”

He wants to ask her why she’s here, why she’s even looking for him, how far away Steve is.

“Sometimes for a one woman team,” she tells him, “the easiest way to break in is to get caught. I didn’t quite expect them to start experimenting immediately.” Her voice is already getting stronger.

(The thing about Margaret Peggy Carter is that she’s a total freaking badass. Perhaps the life of dealing with discrimination is what lit the fire that makes her so unapologetically… her. Bucky thinks a swing from his solid metal fist would do less damage than Peggy with her mind set. He can see why Steve loves her. She’s witty, intelligent, beautiful and creative. She puts on her lipstick with the same hand she uses to knock targets out cold. Songs should been written in her honour. She is a goddess.)

“We should hurry,” she says, “I think we’re about as ready to escape as we’ll ever be.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

He can see her sitting up now, raising her hands into her hair. “They didn’t think to check my hair,” she says, “sometimes it pays off to always be underestimated.”

She pulls out a couple of little devices. “I’d say it’s time we went out with a bang, wouldn’t you?”

-

They walk in silence for hours after exploding their way out of the base, helping one another get back up after they stumble. They are surrounded by miles and miles of snow when he drops to his hands and knees and feels his lungs closing in on him.

“How?” he asks.

Peggy stands, still and silent.

“He’s dead, right?” he asks, and he knows it in his heart because she hasn’t mentioned him once. “How?”

Peggy lets out a shaky breath. “He crashed a plane into the Arctic. He saved all our lives.”

“Of course he did,” Bucky replies, and then he gets up and he walks because Steve wouldn’t want him to just lie down and freeze, no matter how much he wants to, especially when that would mean leaving Peggy to get back to civilisation alone.

-

They get a room in an inn, and sit in front of the fireplace, and he thinks he might never be warm again.

“I couldn’t convince him,” Peggy whispers, “He wouldn’t even give me time to find another solution.”

“If it were possible to convince Steve Rogers not to do something he was set on,” Bucky says, “I’d have figured it out by now.”

“We have to keep going,” she says, “Tomorrow. We’re alive and we can’t waste that. We have a war to win. We need people who can take on Hydra.”

“For Steve,” Bucky murmurs and they look at each other sorrowfully.

-

He doesn’t know who kisses who first.

-

There’s an accident, a dropped knife that cuts into Peggy’s arm and they both watch as it heals right before their eyes. They are the same, he thinks, two people who were brutally changed to be perfect for a dead man. The irony isn’t lost on them.

-

The day the war ends, officially, is the day they get married in a little burnt out church, in their uniforms. They somehow fell in love (the same way that Steve had fallen in love with them, that they still love him). Bucky has no best man.

-

They don’t age.

It takes about ten years before their appearances start raising eyebrows and there comes a point where they need to hand the mantle of their fledgling agency, S.H.I.E.L.D, over to only Howard. The government doesn’t want their intelligence agencies run by immortal test subjects.

Mr and Mrs Barnes-Carter die tragically in a mysterious plane crash. Around the same time, Howard Stark recruits two high-ranking agents for S.H.I.E.L.D, codenames: The Soldier, and Liberty.

-

They don’t spend all their time as agents. They travel the world together and learn languages, fighting styles, all kinds of skills that might come in handy one day. Whatever HYDRA injected them with seems to have made it easier for them to learn; they’re quicker to pick up on things but perhaps not as fast as Steve was.

-

There’s a Captain America movie made in the seventies, a low budget thing that poses Peggy as his doting lover and Bucky as his quirky kid sidekick. They see the trailer at the pictures one night and break down.

They leave the theatre, sit in the alley around the side and cry.

“It’s been thirty years,” Bucky says, thirty-one years, two months, three weeks, six days. “Does it ever get easier than this?”

Peggy leans her head against his shoulder, and breathes. “Howard has this theory. What they did to us was meant to heighten everything that we were at the time, right? Maybe it also strengthened our feelings. Howard said we could always feel like this. We’ll always love him. It’ll always hurt.”

-

It never gets any easier, but Bucky’s not sure if that’s because Howard’s theory was right or because the kind of love they have for Steve is the kind that just never fades. They continue to put thousands of dollars into their Arctic exploration team.

-

The ringing phone wakes Bucky up and he grasps the sheets feeling for his wife before right she’s in Australia at the moment.

“What,” he bites, not bothering to open his eyes enough to check the caller I.D. Maybe three people in the world have his mobile number and one of them is the pizza place down the road from his usual house.

“Our Agent on the Widow assignment in Russia appears to have gone rogue,” Peggy says.

“Okay?”

There’s a moment of silence. “I looked at his file and he’s been exemplary up until now. Maybe a little impudent but his skill and unwavering loyalty more than made up for it.”

“Sometimes loyalty only goes so far,” he says. “So why the midnight phone call?”

“It’s three in the afternoon there, darling.”

“Time is irrelevant and fleeting. What do you want me to do about the rogue?”

“I think there’s a better explanation for this than that he just decided to run away with the target. The commander is experiencing pressure to send out a team to terminate the agent’s employment. I need you to see if there’s a more peaceful way that we can figure this out.”

“Only for you, Liberty. You know, one day we’re going to have to let the children sort out their own problems.”

“Not today, Soldier. Hop to it, you need to be at the airport in twenty minutes.”

-

He manages to track down the rogue agent, codename: Hawkeye, in an abandoned warehouse. It takes a week which, considering Barnes’ decades of experience, is pretty impressive in itself. He suspects that had this not been a spur of the moment, unprepared elopement, Hawkeye and his new friend would be in the wind by now.

The friend Hawkeye has picked up is one Natalia Alianovna Romanova, codename: Black Widow, and the proud owner of fifty confirmed kills and an estimated metric fucktonne of unconfirmed.

The moment Bucky steps into the warehouse is the moment he realises that the rogues might just have been aware of his trailing them. He probably could’ve guessed it but well, he hasn’t had his coffee yet today.

Hawkeye has an arrow aimed at him the second he’s in sight; the woman is waiting in the shadow of a nearby corner, armed heavily.

Bucky takes note: no guns and a low amount of arrows. The pair are clearly haven’t had a chance to restock their resources.

“Who the hell are you?” Hawkeye asks. “You got five seconds, bud.”

The Widow is very pale, he notices. Injured somewhere, losing blood. Any possible following battle is tilted in his favour.

“The Soldier,” he replies. Hawkeye shifts slightly, he recognises the name.

“I suppose I should be flattered they sent you to terminate me, sir.”

The Widow is tensed for a fight.

“You shouldn’t be,” he replies. “I’m here as a personal favour to a friend. She seems to think this is all just some cosmic misunderstanding and we should be giving you the benefit of the doubt. So, let’s hear the big explanation.”

There’s a very long pause. “I disagreed with the mission, sir. I found evidence that the target was coerced and brainwashed. I was ordered to kill her. I made a different call.”

“Some might say, coerced or not, that the target is too dangerous to be left alive. That the risk is too great.”

“My conscience disagrees, sir.”

“So if I ordered you to put her down, right now, you would-”

“Refuse,” Hawkeye replies, belatedly adding, “Sir.”

“Alright,” Bucky says. He looks at the agent and feels something not unlike pride. He’d rather an agent rebel because of his conscience than one who obeys all orders out of fear. Bucky might’ve helped start his own top-secret agency, but he’ll be damned if it turns into the kind of place Hydra was. The kind of place that disrespects the notion of free will and morality.

“So,” Bucky continues, “What do you suggest, ideally, happens next?”

“I believe the target could be an asset for S.H.I.E.L.D. As an agent, not a prisoner.”

Bucky looks to the woman, “And would you be willing to switch teams to S.H.I.E.L.D then, Miss Romanova?”

The woman’s teeth are clenched and Bucky notices the blood at her feet. She’s in need of immediate medical attention and yet here she stands, strong and ready to go down fighting.

“I would be amenable to the idea,” she manages to say.

“Huh,” Bucky says, “Well, that was easy. Now I’m going to make a call for some medical assistance. And if either of you make me regret vouching for you, there’ll be hell to pay.”

-

Barton falls asleep on the plane ride back. Natasha turns to Barnes. “The Soldier,” she says. “Russia’s intelligence knows almost nothing about you. Only that the intel we do have, is a fraction of what there is.”

“Good,” he says.

“There is another legend I was taught of,” she continues, “Of a man who was gifted with strength, health, a cause,” she pauses and looks at him pointedly, “A metal arm that was a gift of technology. And he became a traitor. He’s a story they warn us against. Give us too much and we will forget our cause. Make us too strong and we will lose our missions. We are only as strong as our loyalty to them.” She looks like she wants to smile.

James frowns at her. She shrugs, “They’ll never know their two favourite cautionary tales are one in the same.”

This woman is dangerous. He likes her.

-

There’s a mission in Paris and Peggy and Bucky get to act like lovers until the target - a highly dangerous murderer who, their intel suggests, is interested in becoming a mass murderer - is in place and then it’s easy to help him stumble away from populated areas with a dagger hidden in his side.

Bucky slings his metal arm - now something he thinks of as a part of him, just a part that Howard’s superhero son is allowed to dig around in - around Peggy’s waist and they walk back to the hotel together.

“Do we have to check out already?” Bucky asks, grinning. “We could take a couple of days off. It’s been awhile since we’ve been in France.”

Peggy laughs. “We’ve been off the grid for a month, James, aren’t you afraid the world will fall apart without us?”

When they stop and kiss in the middle of the street, they’re just any other pair of lovers in France, falling in love and being alive together. She’s tugging on his tie and he’s holding her waist and they’d be a postcard image if it weren’t for all the stuff inside that people can’t see.

“Fine, you win,” Peggy says, pulling out her cell phone. “I’ll let Nick know we’re taking the weekend off.”

“Hallelujah!”

She turns on the phone. 29 missed calls. Fury’s voice message telling them not to panic but they might wanna book a plane to New York and give him a call ASAP. Bucky’s booking the plane tickets on his phone while she calls Fury back. They give each other a brief look of concern.

“Liberty,” Nick answers, “Nice of you to call me back.”

“What’s going on, Nick?”

“You might want to hook lover boy in on this one.”

Peggy sighs and gestures for Bucky to connect his ear piece to the call. “Well?”

“Operation: Arctic Expedition was a success,” Fury says and Peggy is pretty sure all the oxygen has left her body. She clutches Bucky’s shoulder. “We’ve found him."

It’s selfish but there was always a part of her that had wished they’d never find Steve’s body. That way she could have pretended he’d lived, gotten back to the world somehow, lived his life. It’s been seventy years and it’s time for them to bury their long-lost first love.

She can feel Bucky swaying slightly. She wonders if he’d hoped the same thing.

Fury is still talking. “...scans show that he should be fully functional. It’s now just a matter of waiting for him to wake up.”

“What?” Peggy asks.

“He’s alive.”

-

He wakes up before their plane touches down.

-

They wonder what he’ll think of who they are now, what they’ve done with their lives. Will he approve of the missions, the world they’ve helped create, S.H.I.E.L.D? Will he still love them?

They stop at the door to the room that he’s been kept in. Apparently, Fury has already briefed him on the events that occurred after his death. Fury has left the fact that they are alive for them to tell him. 

Bucky and Peggy look at each other, possibly their last glance before they walk into a room and make their lives so much more complicated.

“We can’t do this,” Bucky says.

-

The problem is, Steve has been frozen through the last seventy years, he will come out the same wonderful, brave man that he always was. They have lived the past decades, they have been bruised and broken and cracked; their ideals have been tested and they have not passed all these challenges. They are different people and they don’t know how Steve would react to seeing the changes they have become.

The problem is, they are afraid.

-

They don’t go in the room.

-

Aliens attack New York and Barnes sits on high perches where the newly formed Avengers can’t see and he takes out aliens one bullet at a time. Peggy is on the ground, evacuating buildings, getting people out of danger and just being the usual badass that James loves.

Steve doesn’t see them and they don’t mention it.

-

Natasha finds him later. “How the Russians would laugh if they heard how the great James Barnes was afraid of his best friend, Captain America.”

James doesn’t reply.

“He misses you,” she says. “And your mysterious lady Liberty who I know nothing about.”

Cheeky little fucker.

“He misses who we were.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “This is worse than a paperback romance. Stop pining away with your angst and talk to him. He’s very sad without you.”

“We will,” he says, “We’re just waiting for the right time.”

She scoffs.

-

Peggy wants them to see him but she won’t go without James and James won’t go. Not yet.

It’s not because he’s afraid of the rejection (or not entirely), it’s because the last time Steve lost James Barnes, he did a nose dive into the arctic and died. James’ life is in danger on a daily basis and he has no intention of stopping. He’s terrified of what Steve will do if he loses him a second time.

He wants to see Steve get better first. Feel better.

-

On the plus side, Steve’s refused to live at Stark, uh, Avengers Tower, so it means James doesn’t have to sneak around for his maintenance appointments with Tony.

“So,” Tony says, as he plays around with ‘improving’ the arm. “Will there ever come a day when I can stop distracting your Ice Ice Baby with food every time he gets all ‘everyone I love is dead’?”

Barnes shrugs, “No explosives,” he says, instead. “I like it when my limbs don’t tick.”

“So do you think you’ve gotten more boring with age, or were you allergic to fun as a child?”

“Kid, you do not know the definition of fun.”

“Tell that to Miss January, Grandpa.”

-

Someone fucks up somewhere and they end up having to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. There’s no point in salvaging something that’s been infested with HYDRA. Neither Peggy nor Bucky want anything to do with such a thing. Their intel goes live and suddenly the entire world has proof that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes (codename: The Soldier) and Agent Margaret Peggy Carter (codename: Liberty) are alive.

Fuck.

-

Steve is sitting in his apartment, in the dark. It’s all very moody and dramatic, very Steve Rogers. The thing that people tend to leave out of the history books is that Captain America had quite the penchant for dramatics. It’s something the kid picked up on when he was a long suffering artist in the Great Depression, living with a bunch of terrible illnesses and health issues. Not that Bucky could (or ever did) blame him, but c’mon this whole ‘surprise we’re alive’ show would go down a lot easier if someone wasn’t doing his brooding routine.

“Just hurry up and knock on the door,” Peggy says, “Honestly, the two of you are so dramatic. You’re standing outside his window like a creep, Romeo.”

“I need time to get through my internal monologue, Peg.”

Peggy laughs, but it’s quiet, nervous. “Well go on then.”

Bucky pauses. “Nah, you ruined it. Let’s go,” He says.

And then without waiting for him to change his mind - which he was totally not going to, fuck you - she marches him to the door and knocks firmly.

“Quick, there’s still time to run,” Bucky… jokes. It’s probably a joke. Oh, God, They are doing this.

Peggy rolls her eyes and turns back to him, lifting a hand to cup his cheek. “It’s going to be fine, darling,” she says, smiling beautifully.

Then Bucky looks up as Steve’s opening the door and -

Steve covers his shock (grief? relief?) with a stern look. “Really? I had to find out from Hydra?”

Bucky is a goddamned grown man he does not go weak in the knees at all. Peggy gasps - clearly sharing Bucky’s thoughts on how perfect Steve’s voice is - and it’s all a little tearful as Steve pulls them both into a hug.

“I am so mad,” Steve says, “I am so mad you didn’t come to me right away. But we’re gonna ignore that for now and come inside because I missed you both so much.”

And Bucky’s never been happier to have Steve mad at him.

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as a quick bit of back story for the present day OT3 story I wanted to write of them getting back together but it all got a little out of hand. I'm probably not sorry.
> 
> Come say hi (and/or cry about Steve, Pegs, and Buck) to me on tumblr: romannova.tumblr.com


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